Ferratus Creperum
by Silver Sailor Ganymede
Summary: But perhaps the most terrifying thing was that this seemingly callous, sadistic mass murderer was only a child, at least in the eyes of the world.


Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Gi Oh.

Ferratus Creperum  
By Silver Sailor Ganymede

Even then, months after the events themselves, news of the murders still remained the front headline on a vast number of Japan's newspapers. It was reported to this extent not only because of the nature of the crime itself, but because of the one who had commited it, or rather _them_ The fact remained that murder was, thankfully, a rare event in Domino's quiet suberbs, and mass murder rarely happened: but never to the extent that it had and never with such brutallity. The corprses had been found scattered, dismembered: their hearts had been torn from them, their mangled bodies barely recognisable. Their eyes had been ripped from their sockets, and only one remained of each pair: these remaining eyes lay like stones, cold and unseeeing in amongst the carnage of mutilated flesh.

Still perhaps even more terrifying than the nature of the murders themselves was the nature of the one who had committed them. You see he had never killed before – indeed he had a perfect record, never had he committed a crime, or indeed anything that could even be considered even remotely illegal: but the most terrifying thing was that this seemingly callous, sadistic mass murderer was only a _child_: most would not consider him, at seventeen, to have been a child, but he was still a child in the eyes of much of the law, but not in the eyes of the courts.

They had come to the conclusion that he was not to receive the death penelty: he was mentally unstable and thus it would not be fitting to do so. That is why he could be found in the depths of one of Japan's most secure insane asylums after his sentencing: the outside world was no place for a sociopath such as him, after all.

But who was this boy convicted of such heinous murders? His name was Bakura Ryou: he had been a model student at Domino High School and a talented duelist, a quiet, polite boy by all accounts. No one had ever even considered that he would ever do what he eventally did. But they knew it was himl it had all been caught on film and by several eyewitnesses, it couldn't possibly have _not_ been him: the unusual thing about this case is that the boy generally appeared to have no recollection of the events, none at all…

He became silent shortly after: no one would ever find out whether this muteness was chosen or whether some exterior – or indeed interior event had forced it upon him. It was strange in truth that no one noticed when his mouth would open in a silent scream, his features would contort in pain and his eyes would bleed. They passed it off as just another attack, just another demented state: then he would lapse into silence… then the _other _would come.

The _other _was a dramatic change in the boy's personality, a sadist in every manner: the twisted sociopath who had committed all those murders. The _other _maintained that it was a completely separate entity to the boy, Ryou, that he was merely its host for a time. Still this was put down to an extremely severe multiple personality disorder: true split personalities did not exist except in fiction.

At night was the only time the boy would utter any sound: he would scream, his voice unnaturally shrill, almost demonically ethereal as though he was being dragged through torture after torture so immense that it could not be imagined. No one noticed the burns on his chest where the golden ring lay: he would tug at it, try and wrench it from him, but it would never disappear.

It is somewhat unsurprising, in the end, to say that the boy died. At first the doctors came to the conclusion that he had committed suicide; after all he was certainly mentally unstable. The first strange detail they noticed was that the golden ring, which never left his side, had disappeared. At a closer look the wounds his corpse bore could not have possibly been self-inflicted: in fact they bore an uncanny similarity to those found in the recent murders, the ones of which he had been convicted. The real culprit of the Domino Massacre has never to this day been found.


End file.
